Computing devices, such as smart phones and tablet computers, have become an integral part of most people's lives. For example, people use smart phones not only for aural and textual communications, but also to obtain news and other information, to make sales and purchases, to keep up with friends and family, to find and navigate to destinations, and to enjoy a myriad of entertainment options. Furthermore, computing devices, even mobile ones, are still important productivity tools in the workplace. People rely on computing devices to create and edit documents, presentations, digital images, and other forms of media. These various capabilities are typically provided by different applications that are executed by a computing device.
The graphical user interface (GUI) was developed decades ago to simplify user interactions with an application executing on a computing device. Generally, a GUI represents computing concepts, capabilities, files, functions, and settings with icons, drag-and-drop motions, menus, and so forth. These GUI representations simplify computing tasks and make interacting with computing devices easier. An example of a user interaction mechanism that has been included as part of GUIs for years is a slider that has multiple values. A slider displayed as part of a GUI typically includes a slider bar and a marker. An end user drags the marker along the slider bar to change an indicated value for some parameter of a computing device. For example, a computing device adjusts a level at which sound is output responsive to where an end user moves a marker along a volume slider.
Sliders have been used effectively with the GUIs of desktop computing devices for years. Mobile computing devices, however, have taken an increasingly larger share of the computing device space over the last decade. Unfortunately, conventional approaches to implementing a slider in a GUI do not translate well to mobile computing devices due to constraints resulting from a reduced size of the display device. Consequently, adjusting a parameter with a slider is difficult for end users that are interacting with a mobile computing device.